Coffins Quotes

"The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise."

A lot of children, like in the United States, don`t remember the real horror of (World War II), because they never had to, as they do in Europe and Russia and so on. I`m not saying America didn`t have a terrible experience, but it never came home to them that way. You had rationing and shortages, and people got killed and coffins came home. But you didn`t have the experience of the block opposite being destroyed when you got up in the morning.

(on The Godfather: Part III (1990)) You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That`s not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael`s mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He`s not a part of the Goodfellas (1990) thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn`t right. I applaud (Francis Ford Coppola) for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface (1983) when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it.

You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That`s not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael`s mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He`s not a part of the GoodFellas thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn`t right. I applaud Francis Coppola for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it. - On _Godfather: Part III, The (1990)_

We are isolated from this war by the media and the Bush administration. We don`t see the coffins coming back.